I blame Terry Pratchett
Aug. 31st, 2010 03:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
moogingWhen I am on the computer, I am on the sofa. Right next to the sofa, I have a handy box for handily storing biscuits, on top of which are the books I am in the middle of reading. Right now, there are five on there.
Flashback 1: There was a sale in Waterstones the other day. 3 for 2 on all fiction. ALL FICTION. Even to someone (me) who has recently received a bank statement that basically said STOP SPENDING YOUR MONEY ON BOOKS AND FILMS, YOU IDIOTIC, FISCALLY IRRESPONSIBLE LOSER, that is like a siren call of imminent money loss and storage problems. The books are taking over, there is no escape, etc etc etc. Anyway. I bought the couple of Neil Gaiman's I'd had on my to-buy-when-brain-stops-telling-you-not-to-buy-books list (doesn't everyone have one of those?) and that left the dilemma as to which should be the third/free one. This leads nicely into:
Flashback 2:
CB: YOU HAVE NOT READ ANY TERRY PRATCHETT ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
MOOG: I ... didn't get on with Good Omens? At all? And the bits I did like were few and far between?
CB: NO EXCUSE READ SOME DISCWORLD AT ONCE.
Which brings us back to
Flashback 1: So I bought The Colour of Magic. You know, I figured I'd start at the beginning and all that.
The thing is, though, I really don't get on with Terry Pratchett books. I want to! I long with a large part of my heart to love them the way the rest of the internet seems to do! I just... don't. There's this disconnect in my brain somewhere between Large Amount of Fantasy Names (see also: I cannot read Lord of the Rings) and I Quite Like The Dialogue Though and Something Just Isn't Clicking For Me and I just - get bored. While I'm reading. Sometimes in the middle of sentences. However! The ads for all the tv adaptations all look AMAZING, and I happily watch LOTR and the fantasy names barely bother me at all (look, I know I am a horrible person, okay, let's move on) and so I know that if I could just KEEP READING then I would in all probability REALLY LOVE Discworld books. But I don't. And I've tried. And I still don't.
Which in turn brings us back to this morning.
There isn't really room for five books on top of my biscuit box. I have on there Havemercy by Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett (a semi-permanent fixture, as I am pretty much always flicking through to reread parts), One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night by Christopher Brookmyer (something I have not yet started), Wild Swans by Jung Chang (I'm in the middle of it but keep having to veer away and read something cheerful), Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner (which I read half of in one sitting, and then had to go and do something else and know I'm going to have to start from the beginning again when I pick it up again: it's very court-drama/cloak-and-dagger, with lots of feuds and complicated tension going on that you really need to keep straight) and THEN we have The Colour of Magic.
I read the first part. It was a painful experience, although I did like the Luggage, and Rincewind. I like the characters in general! However, something still wasn't clicking for me and so it sat, wedged between the pile of books and the sofa cushion, not quite fitting and always causing me to knock the pile of books over because there's just too many.
Incidentally, my phone lives on top of these books as well.
So, this morning, to get back to my incredibly belaboured point.
The scene: precarious pile of books on biscuit box, topped by phone. Next to this, all the remotes for the tv/dvd player/freeview/video player etc. Juuuust in front of that: my computer.
I put down a glass of orange juice.
You see where this is going.
Although, actually, it wasn't quite that simple.
1. Open laptop. Turn laptop on. Leave laptop on floor.
2. Carefully remove stack of books from biscuit box. Move biscuit box to unstable perch on the sofa arm. Remove lid of biscuit box and put on even more unstable pile of cushions next to the sofa arm. (if applicable, also throw away the horrible dried apple rings you bought in a fit of wanting to like apples again after binging on them last summer and being unable to look at them since but which were AWFUL because they tasted like apple and you should have known better).
3. Remove nommy biscuit nom (author suggests Oreos).
4. Accidently nudge unstable cushion pile, sending biscuit box lid careening off the sofa arm with projected course of JUICE GLASS - COMPUTER in 0.0001 seconds. Make retarded whimpering noise of despair and inevitability.
5. REJOICE! An unknown, previously absent universal force has sent the lid bouncing off the stack of books and straight onto the floor, completely missing the juice AND the computer! You have become an accident-avoiding ninja! Take a moment to bask in your glory.
6. Retrieve and replace lid on biscuit box. Move back to the floor and put biscuit box back in position near sofa.
7. Replace books on top of biscuit box.
8. Replace phone on top of books.
9. Wiggle books to get them to fit (A Colour of Magic is making this step more difficult).
10. Absently note A Colour of Magic falling from pile of books.
11. Hear the sound of COMPLETELY FULL GLASS OF JUICE tipping over.
12. Turn head in slow-motion horror.
13. JUICE IS ON YOUR PHONE.
14. AND YOUR REMOTES.
15. AND THE COMPUTER NOOOOOOOO SHIIIIIT SHIT SHIT SHIT
16. SHIT
17. SHIT
18. SHIT SHIT SHIT FUCK
19. WHERE ARE THE TISSUES
20. Cry.
Somewhere in there, I commenced Operation: Save Computer From it's Juicy Grave, and mopped up all the juice on the keyboard, and checked none had gone anywhere else, and poked some keys and it all still worked, and then I immediately backed everything the fuck up in case of delayed computer failure. Right now everything's okay, apart from the gigantic stain on my carpet (fuck you, orange juice) and the fact that some of the keys on the keyboard make a worrying sort of crunch when they get pressed but I'm not convinced, because, as should be fairly self-evident, I have the luck of Disgraced Ninja Moo rather than JAM-CATCHING NINJA of my former glory days (another story in itself).
Obviously the moral of this story is not that I should be more careful where I put my drinks around technology. The moral is that if I hadn't been attempting to give Discworld another shot after previous lack of successes and personal reservations, NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED.
So, to conclude: if my computer dies a death, I blame Terry Pratchett.
PLEASE DON'T DIE, LOVELY COMPUTER, I AM SORRY FOR MY OWN INEPTITUDE.
Flashback 1: There was a sale in Waterstones the other day. 3 for 2 on all fiction. ALL FICTION. Even to someone (me) who has recently received a bank statement that basically said STOP SPENDING YOUR MONEY ON BOOKS AND FILMS, YOU IDIOTIC, FISCALLY IRRESPONSIBLE LOSER, that is like a siren call of imminent money loss and storage problems. The books are taking over, there is no escape, etc etc etc. Anyway. I bought the couple of Neil Gaiman's I'd had on my to-buy-when-brain-stops-telling-you-not-to-buy-books list (doesn't everyone have one of those?) and that left the dilemma as to which should be the third/free one. This leads nicely into:
Flashback 2:
CB: YOU HAVE NOT READ ANY TERRY PRATCHETT ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
MOOG: I ... didn't get on with Good Omens? At all? And the bits I did like were few and far between?
CB: NO EXCUSE READ SOME DISCWORLD AT ONCE.
Which brings us back to
Flashback 1: So I bought The Colour of Magic. You know, I figured I'd start at the beginning and all that.
The thing is, though, I really don't get on with Terry Pratchett books. I want to! I long with a large part of my heart to love them the way the rest of the internet seems to do! I just... don't. There's this disconnect in my brain somewhere between Large Amount of Fantasy Names (see also: I cannot read Lord of the Rings) and I Quite Like The Dialogue Though and Something Just Isn't Clicking For Me and I just - get bored. While I'm reading. Sometimes in the middle of sentences. However! The ads for all the tv adaptations all look AMAZING, and I happily watch LOTR and the fantasy names barely bother me at all (look, I know I am a horrible person, okay, let's move on) and so I know that if I could just KEEP READING then I would in all probability REALLY LOVE Discworld books. But I don't. And I've tried. And I still don't.
Which in turn brings us back to this morning.
There isn't really room for five books on top of my biscuit box. I have on there Havemercy by Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett (a semi-permanent fixture, as I am pretty much always flicking through to reread parts), One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night by Christopher Brookmyer (something I have not yet started), Wild Swans by Jung Chang (I'm in the middle of it but keep having to veer away and read something cheerful), Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner (which I read half of in one sitting, and then had to go and do something else and know I'm going to have to start from the beginning again when I pick it up again: it's very court-drama/cloak-and-dagger, with lots of feuds and complicated tension going on that you really need to keep straight) and THEN we have The Colour of Magic.
I read the first part. It was a painful experience, although I did like the Luggage, and Rincewind. I like the characters in general! However, something still wasn't clicking for me and so it sat, wedged between the pile of books and the sofa cushion, not quite fitting and always causing me to knock the pile of books over because there's just too many.
Incidentally, my phone lives on top of these books as well.
So, this morning, to get back to my incredibly belaboured point.
The scene: precarious pile of books on biscuit box, topped by phone. Next to this, all the remotes for the tv/dvd player/freeview/video player etc. Juuuust in front of that: my computer.
I put down a glass of orange juice.
You see where this is going.
Although, actually, it wasn't quite that simple.
1. Open laptop. Turn laptop on. Leave laptop on floor.
2. Carefully remove stack of books from biscuit box. Move biscuit box to unstable perch on the sofa arm. Remove lid of biscuit box and put on even more unstable pile of cushions next to the sofa arm. (if applicable, also throw away the horrible dried apple rings you bought in a fit of wanting to like apples again after binging on them last summer and being unable to look at them since but which were AWFUL because they tasted like apple and you should have known better).
3. Remove nommy biscuit nom (author suggests Oreos).
4. Accidently nudge unstable cushion pile, sending biscuit box lid careening off the sofa arm with projected course of JUICE GLASS - COMPUTER in 0.0001 seconds. Make retarded whimpering noise of despair and inevitability.
5. REJOICE! An unknown, previously absent universal force has sent the lid bouncing off the stack of books and straight onto the floor, completely missing the juice AND the computer! You have become an accident-avoiding ninja! Take a moment to bask in your glory.
6. Retrieve and replace lid on biscuit box. Move back to the floor and put biscuit box back in position near sofa.
7. Replace books on top of biscuit box.
8. Replace phone on top of books.
9. Wiggle books to get them to fit (A Colour of Magic is making this step more difficult).
10. Absently note A Colour of Magic falling from pile of books.
11. Hear the sound of COMPLETELY FULL GLASS OF JUICE tipping over.
12. Turn head in slow-motion horror.
13. JUICE IS ON YOUR PHONE.
14. AND YOUR REMOTES.
15. AND THE COMPUTER NOOOOOOOO SHIIIIIT SHIT SHIT SHIT
16. SHIT
17. SHIT
18. SHIT SHIT SHIT FUCK
19. WHERE ARE THE TISSUES
20. Cry.
Somewhere in there, I commenced Operation: Save Computer From it's Juicy Grave, and mopped up all the juice on the keyboard, and checked none had gone anywhere else, and poked some keys and it all still worked, and then I immediately backed everything the fuck up in case of delayed computer failure. Right now everything's okay, apart from the gigantic stain on my carpet (fuck you, orange juice) and the fact that some of the keys on the keyboard make a worrying sort of crunch when they get pressed but I'm not convinced, because, as should be fairly self-evident, I have the luck of Disgraced Ninja Moo rather than JAM-CATCHING NINJA of my former glory days (another story in itself).
Obviously the moral of this story is not that I should be more careful where I put my drinks around technology. The moral is that if I hadn't been attempting to give Discworld another shot after previous lack of successes and personal reservations, NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED.
So, to conclude: if my computer dies a death, I blame Terry Pratchett.
PLEASE DON'T DIE, LOVELY COMPUTER, I AM SORRY FOR MY OWN INEPTITUDE.
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no subject
Date: 2010-08-31 02:15 pm (UTC)Occasionally I get trapped when I'm sitting on my bed with my computer on my lap, and my mum gives me full cup of tea... so if I try to put either the tea or the laptop down, the tea goes on the laptop!
My friend spilt orange juice on his ipod and put it in a bag with rice on to get all the moisture out, which saved the ipod. However, I don't know how you would go about putting a laptop in a bag with rice...
no subject
Date: 2010-08-31 02:26 pm (UTC)Oh no, do you end up trapped with tea and computer and bed with no way to move? What an awful position to find yourself in :p I guess you just HAVE to keep reading LJ for a bit longer.
I would attempt some sort of ninja laptop/rice combination, but my ninja skills are apparently on the wane today.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-31 02:19 pm (UTC)If it is at all reassuring, I don't get on with Terry Pratchett either. Thank you for the information that attempting to overcome one's Pratchett-aversion leads to computer-endangerment.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-31 02:28 pm (UTC)do not attempt to read any more Terry Pratchett. it leads only to despair and computer worry like a mother on her child's first day of school. that is, if by 'child' you mean 'computer' and by 'first day of school' you mean A DAY OF JUICE-RELATED DISASTER.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-31 07:05 pm (UTC)I enjoyed The Colour Of Magic and I like quite a lot of Terry Pratchett, but there are a few that don't sit well with me either. My mother hates 'em. I hope your computer is alright and that no more perfectly good juice is spilled over the electronics in your attempt to reconcile yourself with popular authors.
...in conclusion, I like Terry Pratchett. But I like orange juice and Macs more.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-08 03:33 am (UTC)o1. HOW can you not love Good Omens?! HOW?! It is my summer book of epic summer-ness. And it makes me laugh like a moron every time. XD
o2. Don't give up on Discworld after 'Color of Magic', I didn't care for that book, either, but I love some of the others. Try 'Reaper Man', that's my favorite. (Death is sort of the best character ever. You know it's true.)
o3. Share your 'you shouldn't buy books' conscience with me? My favorite author just released something shiny and new, and I'm debating whether I can live off of toast for the rest of the month ...